L’Innocente (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Oct 11, 2024
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Luchino ViscontiRelease Date(s)
1976 (September 24, 2024)Studio(s)
Rizzoli Film/Les Films Jacques Leitienne/Francoriz Production (Film Movement Classics/Vinegar Syndrome)- Film/Program Grade: A
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: B
Review
Director Luchino Visconti’s final film, L’Innocente was in post-production when the already ailing filmmaker, a recent stroke victim and five-pack-a-day smoker, was felled by a second stroke in March 1976 at age 69. Giancarlo Giannini, the star of the film, supervised its final cut.
The film is a handsomely-produced if depressing, even disturbing masterpiece, exceeded perhaps only by The Leopard (1963) among Visconti’s later works.
Giannini plays wealthy Roman aristocrat Tullio Hermil, an atheist who all but flaunts his infidelities before his long-suffering wife, Giuliana (Laura Antonelli). The current mistress is aristocratic widow Teresa Raffo (Jennifer O’Neill, apparently dubbed), so offended when Tullio’s wife turns up at a concert that she temporarily dumps him for the much older, philistine Count Egano (Massimo Girotti).
In an incredible early scene, in what today might be called “mansplaining,” Tullio defines his relationship with his wife to his wife, assuring her that his affection for her remains, even though he understandably no longer finds her desirable sexually and, naturally, turns to other, more exciting lovers. No, he concludes, he regards Giuliana more like a sister than a wife. Poor Giuliana just sits there and takes it.
While visiting Tullio’s contrastingly unpretentious, sweet-natured younger brother, Federico (Didier Haudepin), Giuliana is introduced to Filippo d’Arborio (Marc Porel), a best-selling novelist popular among the women of Europe. They have a fleeting affair and Tullio, sensing this, now becomes sexually reattracted to his wife, who seems to be actively if subtly seducing him, despite her outward passivity. At the large, empty villa purchased for the couple by Tullio’s loving mother (Rina Morelli, also her last film), the marrieds make passionate love and seemingly reconcile. But then Tullio learns Giuliana is pregnant with Filippo’s child, and this just won’t do.
Throughout L’Innocente, Giannini, with his cold, steely eyes and cruel handsomeness, reminded me of Alain Delon’s darkest screen characters, so it came as no surprise to learn Visconti originally wanted Delon for the part, opposite Romy Schneider as Giuliana and even wrote the part of Teresa especially for Charlotte Rampling, none of whom were available when Visconti needed them. O’Neill is okay but Rampling would have been sensational. However, Giannini is excellent and as tantalizing it is to imagine Schneider as Giuliana, Laura Antonelli is a revelation. For an actress who began with Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs followed by starring roles in broad Italian sex farces, her performance here gobsmacks. She’s so subtle that for most of the film she’s like a chalkboard wiped clean, a blank—in one scene wearing a veil so tightly pressed against her face she resembles a mummy. Outwardly her feelings are locked behind frozen features not reacting to Tullio’s endlessly appalling machismo and hypocrisy. Yet, at the same time, the audience is able to feel every excruciating humiliation though, significantly, not quite everything.
Mostly, Visconti’s film explores how Italy’s privileged class felt themselves above the religious codes imposed by the Catholic Church, and the double-standards casually applied by men, able to openly have scores of mistresses while their wives were expected to remain loyal and chaste to avert scandal. Tullio’s atheism opens wide the doors of unbridled hedonism, while allowing him to pressure Giuliana into having an illegal abortion, a mortal sin besides.
The 2.35:1 widescreen Technovision lensing by cinematographer Pasqualino De Santis (Romeo and Juliet, Death in Venice, The Damned) consists of painterly compositions, augmented by the Visconti’s Kubrick-like attention to period detail. (Visconti’s use of zoom lenses betrays this, though he shows more restraint in their use here compared to his other late-period films.) The costumes and production design look period-authentic and lived-in, in ways rare even now. Visually, the picture is as rich as its themes are unrelentingly dark and depressing, particularly in terms of the fate of the film’s title character.
Film Movement Classics’ Region-Free Blu-ray looks gorgeous, a new digital restoration and a treat for the eyes with the bright colors of the women’s costumes, and all the period set decoration (the reds of the wallpaper, etc.). The LPCM (2.0) mono is very good for what it is; it’s surprising nowhere in Europe was the film presented in a 70mm blow-up with stereo sound, but apparently not. The optional English subtitles are excellent, though the film’s title credits go unsubtitled.
Supplements consist of Reframing L’Innocente, a nearly 13-minute video essay by Visconti expert Ivo Blom, a trailer, and a 16-page booklet featuring a good essay by writer Dan Callahan.
L’Innocente is methodically paced but so rich and passionate and intriguing that it’s never dull. Indeed, much of the film plays like a silent, repressed scream, a fitting final film of one of cinema’s great filmmakers.
- Stuart Galbraith IV